Comments Elsewhere

Josh: For open heart surgery, I lean more toward the licencing side.

Licensing by whom?

If you just mean that you favor surgeons being credentialed by medical experts, there’s already a system for that (the MD) without the further intervention of a licensing bureaucracy.

If you mean that you favor surgeons being licensed by the government over and above the community standards existing already in the medical field, then I don’t know where the government (or for that matter privatized defense agencies) would get the knowledge, the virtue, or the right to impose licensing schemes above and beyond the voluntary forms of credentialing that exist within the medical community.

In either case, I think the case under question isn’t even anywhere near a gray area. Ms. Wightman is a working counselor who does talk therapy for willing patients (not surgery or even the prescription of drugs). I don’t think that there’s even a prima facie plausible case for demanding a formalized licensing system here (certainly not imposing byzantine regulations about whether you can call your business “psychological” or merely “psychotherapeutic”!)